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Showing posts from November, 2014

The power of drama: Of money lending, forced labour, keeping Dalits out of voting booths

By Gagan Sethi*  The power of television reaching rural Gujarat was envisioned way back in late 1970s and early 1980s. At the Behavioural Science Centre (BSC) in Ahmedabad, I was involved in bringing about awareness on issues of discrimination and untouchabilty with the help of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Pij village of Kheda district. This project came to be identified as ISRO-Pij experiment. BSC and ISRO seemed strange bedfellows to me, but there I was, working with ISRO. A dynamic producer K Vishwanath, a leftist at heart, wanted us to get real life stories, which would be enacted and shown across the Kheda district. For organisations aiming at social change using Paulo Friere’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” as a frame, this seemed to be a dream come true. Several stories were collected from the field, and professional writers like Chinu Modi and a few theatre actors were roped in. But the result was half-baked version of urban actors mouthing rural dialogues. Not qui

Who taught them compassion even amid adversity? I haven’t yet been able to figure it out

By Gagan Sethi*  One of the early laws on rural livelihood, based on land and labour, was regarding schedule caste cooperatives being given priority over all others in the allocation of government wasteland. Today, a similar status and privilege is accorded to the likes of Adanis and Ambanis. Under the present scheme of things, they “need” land more than the rural landless in the name of ambitious projects. It was 1978. It took us a year to get 90 acres of saline land on yearly lease off the Gulf of Khambhat. It was jointly given to 60 Dalit Vankar families, who registered themselves as cooperative in a village called Vadgam. Since no food crop would grow there, we saw the possibility of growing prosopis juliflora, better known in Gujarat as gando baval – or mad babool. It was a livelihood generation project, in which the gando baval wood was to be used to make charcoal. It was a challenge to manage it professionally. It was one hour walk to the site of the project through a marshy zon

Poor rural IMR is reason behind Gujarat’s failure to achieve UN goal

By Rajiv Shah  Latest data of the Sample Registration System (SRS), operating under the Census of India, suggest that Gujarat suffers from a huge rural-urban divide in infant mortality rate (IMR) rate compared to most other Indian states. Statistics offered by the SRS Bulletin, finalized in September 2014, show that Gujarat’s rural IMR is 43 per 1000, as against the urban IMR of 22 per 1000, suggesting a whopping gap of 21, higher than 20 major Indian states, with the exception of Assam. Interestingly, the gap remains high despite the fact that well-known experts have been pointing towards poor state of rural infrastructure in Gujarat for the last several years. Apparently, their voice is not being heard. The CEPT University’s Prof Darshini Mahadevia, pointed towards this in 2007, when she wrote that the main problem with Gujarat’s IMR was a very high rural IMR compared to urban IMR. “Other states have shown far better improvement in rural healthcare than Gujarat. This neglect of rur

Paralegals' role in offering affordable, quality legal services to vulnerable sections

A public event in Delhi, National Meet on Social Lawyering — organized by the Centre for Social Justice and Lawyers for Change — saw release the book , “Nyayika – Making Professional Legal Services Accessible” , which deals with how Nyayika carried out its unique experiment over the last one year of its existence as a private non-profit company. Prof Madhava Menon, chancellor, Guru Ghasidas Central University, Chhattisgarh, who released the book, said the Nayika model of community lawyering offering affordable legal services with sensitivity to the poor and the vulnerable should focus more on people and communities rather than courts. He added, there was a need to move away from court-centric lawyering towards a process of bringing justice to the people by using administrative and other mechanisms outside the courts to enable people to claim their rights and entitlements, and live with dignity. Among those who took part in the event included founding directors of Nyayika Rajendra Josh

Needed, honest clerks to free India of pangs of hunger: Food for work, NREGA

By Gagan Sethi*  It’s been 37 years since I started out as a raw hand with a master’s degree in social work from MS University of Baroda. I had refused a job with a four-figure salary. I joined an organisation, then euphemistically called a ‘voluntary organisation’; there were a few of them which prided in being professional and in the business of social change. Many others were all about charity fostering dependencies. Today we are called NGOs (non-government organisations), a word which describes itself as what it is not — a term coined by World Bank which, in a sense, charts the 37 years of change from social work being a vocation to a profession to a job opportunity! In 1977, I remember supervising food for work, that is, wheat bulgur given in lieu of work to the poor. The work involved either building community assets or remodeling their own fields for paddy so that the incomes of the dalit households could be increased. This was to also provide food security to the poor, especial

Gujarat ranks 10th out of 20 states in household power consumption

By Rajiv Shah*  The Gujarat government has long claimed that one of the major reasons for the state’s economic progress has been its “excellent” power sector performance. The state’s policy makers have argued, on the basis of Government of India data, that Gujarat’s power consumption, in per capita terms, is one of the highest in India. Gujarat’s new chief secretary D Jagatheesa Pandian, for instance, said in an interview in 2013, quoting Central Electricity Commission figures, when he headed the state energy department, that the per capita consumption of electricity in Gujarat in 2012 was around 1,516 units as against the national average of 879 units. He insisted, “This figure indicates the progress and growth happening in the state. In Gujarat, state utilities are providing an uninterrupted supply of electricity, quality and reliable power to all consumers.” While this may be showcased to prove that Gujarat is at the top in the power sector, it does not tell the full story. No dou

Concentration of large holdings in fewer hands, marginalization of Gujarat farmers

Average large land holdings in selected states (hectares) By Rajiv Shah  A recent Government of India report, giving complete details of the state of agriculture in India, has suggested that while Gujarat may have seen around 9 plus per cent of agricultural growth in the last decade, this has happened alongside a simultaneous marginalization of the state’s farming community. The data put out in “Agriculture Census 2010-11”, finalized this year, have found that large farmers, who form just one per cent of the total farmers in Gujarat, each with an average holding of 20.91 hectares (ha), own 10.30 per cent of the total operational holdings in the state. By sharp contrast, marginal farmers, forming 37.16 per cent of the total farmers – and each with an average holding of 0.49 ha– own 7.7 per cent of the total operational holdings. What is equally disturbing in that, while there was a sharp rise in the number of marginal farmers in Gujarat from 15.85 lakh to 18.16 lakh between 2005-6 and